My comments on the January entries have been inhibited by the demands of life in the first world, which have become pressing and unavoidable - not all bad, though I am a perfectionist so it means that, as I don't like to present a mediocre post I've chosen to present none. I would like to acknowledge and thank Jayjay Zifanwe, Yesikita Coppola and Ginger Alsop for their words of encouragement and perspective on what we do here in Second Life. Thank you also, again, to those artists who have contacted me personally - some day I hope to meet some of you and see your wonderful personal galleries and collections, of which I hear snippets from time to time. I'm not doing anything very deep when I do manage to mooch into our second life at present, spending time with friends and, sadly, sometimes seeking hedonism for its own sake. I am usually drained of energy and even clear thought is not often part of my experience when I do manage to slip in-world, and depth of thinking and even the ability to appreciate emotionally is largely absent. Maybe this will improve with time.
However, one night last week Jayjay did draw my attention to one of the January works which he thought I would find interesting, and I caught my limo, as it turned out, right into the centre of this huge piece. Instantly I was surrounded by colour and movement, and I realize on reflection that I was actually privileged to be one of the few who will approach this work in this unique manner - from the inside out, as it were. As I stood there taking in the deluge of visual sensations, I had no concept of where I was, what the whole work looked like from outside. My initial impression from some of the apparently living textures was that I was inside a living organism, and standing on the 'floor' it seemed almost animal-like in appearance. Was I, like the biblical character Jonah, inside the belly of some creature? The lack of stomach secretions suggested that the beast hadn't eaten for a while, so was I about to face a torrent of acid to turn me into a nutritious morsel? Then I noticed an emanation of beautiful bubbles floating above me, and my perception started to change... and I shifted my gaze upward, and following my eyes I started to levitate, quickly drawing level with vast, delicious flowers sprouting from the surface of the mass of tissue I had first taken for stomach lining. My thinking whirled and reorientated, accepting that the organism, for such I am still convinced it is, was at least partly vegetable... though the sense of fleshy tissue remained behind the flowers. I thought momentarily of the 'triffids', malevolent plants from the imagination of another era, but this work portrays no aggression or destruction, but rather a sense of benign peace and being enclosed in a cocoon of voluptuous living wonder. As I allowed my focus to move upward and outward, I discovered that indeed I was inside a beautiful bubble which seemed to throb with the energy of the life within it, and I was left to contemplate what manner of creature it was with which I had experienced such a close encounter. Claudia222 Jewell, thankyou for the engulfing experience of your Strange Plant, for such I discovered it to be after I had enjoyed it.
Claudia222 Jewell - Strange PlantI had hoped also to write on Ginger Alsop's two works, and indeed I took photographs to support that intent, but my time is already gone and I must turn my attention again to my first world demands. The other works I have not even seen this month, and I know, from past experience, that I am the poorer for it; but such are the threads of our lives sometimes which bind us in our bodies and, most especially, in our minds, that there is so much that must inevitably pass us by.
